The use of inflatable occupant restraints, or airbags, in automotive vehicles has become common in the industry. Inflatable occupant restraint systems have long been available to respond to frontal impacts, and, more currently, side airbags, have been developed for absorbing energy due to excessive lateral loading of vehicles.
A particular challenge in developing side airbag systems is packaging the system, which typically includes an airbag module, within limited structure along the side of the vehicle, particularly the roof rail and pillars. Various approaches have been taken to accomplish this packaging task, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,605,346 (Cheung et al.) for a side mounted airbag module, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,903 (Kuretake et al.) for a device protecting the head of an occupant. These designs, however, may not provide sufficient energy absorption for side impacts or other conditions which do not initiate airbag deployment.